The widespread availability of data-enabled mobile devices (primarily, but not exclusively, mobile telephones) has created a demand for access to information while mobile. Traditional internet search solutions do not effectively address this need.
Traditional internet search solutions rely on allowing users to efficiently perform the following iterative sequence:                1. Enter a search term (typically composed of one or more keywords).                    a. This generates a list of search results, typically ranked with “most relevant” first.            b. Each result consists of a link to the full result together with some summary information.                        2. The user examines the search results to see if any appear to contain the information they require.                    a. Sometimes this determination can be made from the summary information displayed for each result alone.            b. On other occasions the user opens one or more full results in order to examine the full contents.                        3. If none of the matches contains the information necessary, the user either:                    a. Views a further tranche of results.            b. Refines the search term and starts again from step 1 above.                        
From a technical perspective, mobile devices have a number of limitations:                Slow, high-latency and intermittent network connections.        Small displays (both in terms of resolution and physical size).        Slow and awkward text-entry.        Software (internet browser, document viewers/editors) which has much reduced functionality compared to the equivalents on desktop computers.        
These limitations reduce the effectiveness of searching as described above in the following ways:                Each step of the iterative process described above takes longer, dramatically reducing its efficiency. This arises from:                    Slow text-entry meaning that entering search terms takes longer.            High-latency connections meaning that the time from entering a search term to seeing the results takes longer.            Slow connections meaning that opening full results takes longer.            Unreliable connections resulting in the likelihood of one step of the iterative process failing.                        Many of the information sources available to search engines have not been optimized for mobile devices, meaning that:                    They may not display correctly.            The quantity of information displayed may be excessive, making it difficult to “see the wood for the trees”.            They make take an excessively long time to load (further reducing the efficiency of the iterative process).                        
In addition to the technical reasons above, there are a number of practical/sociological reasons why traditional internet search is inappropriate for mobile use:                In contrast to desktop users who may be simply browsing, mobile users typically have more focussed questions—they want a specific answer to a specific question. Search results do not typically handle this very well:                    The answer may be present somewhere on one of the full results, but typically it will be surrounded by other less relevant (from the point of view of the mobile user) context.            The information to answer the question may be present, but not phrased as an answer to the question.            It may be necessary to combine several results to synthesize an answer to the question (e.g. search results for the question “Which is taller, the Eiffel Tower of the Statue of Liberty” may contain a result with the height of one and another with the height of the other, but no result which directly compares the two).                        Mobile users typically have much less time to spare and more other considerations competing for their time. In particular they are unlikely to have the time necessary to perform the iterative process outlined above (even without the inefficiencies caused by the limitations of mobile technology).        
For all of these reasons, known methods of search are not an appropriate solution to mobile users' information access needs. Furthermore, in general, computers are not yet capable of accurately answering unrestricted natural language questions, although this remains an active research area (illustrated, for example, by the various solutions competing in the annual Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) competition: http://trec.nist.gov/ and the commercial services Powerset http://www.powerset.com/and [true knowledge] http://www.trueknowledge.com/)
The applicant has recognised that there is a need for an improved mobile search method.
Additionally, since computers are not yet capable of accurately answering unrestricted natural language questions, such questions are generally distributed amongst a number of researchers (agents) who research the question and provide an answer. Traditional approaches to distributing work items to agents suffer from inefficiently matching agents' capabilities with work items (e.g. round-robin, in which work items are allocated to agents in turn) or are susceptible to gaming (e.g. differential pricing, in which unpopular work items are associated with a higher price and we rely on market forces to ensure that all work items are handled in a timely manner).